A Grave near Village Bridge
by SilverGate555
Summary: In this time, in this age, Pokémon dying in battle shouldn't happen. No trainer thinks it'll ever happen to them, anyway. Nate thought the same way before it happened to him.


Nate found himself caught in the triumphant gaze of his opponent, Champion Cynthia from the Sinnoh region—an unexpected and unfortunate result. For most of the match, she had been lagging behind him as he successfully knocked out Garchomp, her signature Pokémon, with relative ease. Now she'd been able to utilize her Spirtomb in such a way that the disadvantage of her earlier situation managed to melt away, and she stared back at him solidly defiant. The audience's cheering shook Nate's ears until to a certain point it seemed like all he could hear: the roars of thousands of eager voices, merging into an unintelligible blur of sound. He couldn't manage to work out who they were cheering for, and numbly, he thought it wouldn't be surprising for either Cynthia or himself to be their main target. Cynthia was the longstanding and highly popular Champion from Sinnoh. Nate was from this region, Unova, and this was his home turf. He'd already battled on this arena countless times before and bested other trainers.

Save for one Pokémon he had withheld from earlier in the fight, Nate was finished. Cynthia was in the same boat, having only her Lucario with her, Spiritomb having been defeated shortly before. Lucario was already weak from the damage that Samurott had managed to get in so as long as Nate's last Pokémon got even one shot in, he couldn't lose. This didn't seem too difficult a task, but Nate's heart was pounding rapidly, adrenaline electrifying him. He sent out his Zoroark.

The last of his Pokémon, Zoroark was already slightly harmed in the course of this fight, but not enough that it made Nate feel nervous. In a fitting way, Cynthia had tried to get her Spirtomb to attack the disguised Zoroark with a Ghost-type move earlier, which didn't end well for her and gave Zoroark time to use U-turn. Even then, after so many times Nate has used the same trick before, it made him internally smirk. He knew that a Zoroark wasn't considered highly in competitive battling, but the idea of abandoning this Pokémon for main use was unfathomable. It was his first Pokémon that he received as a starter from his estranged father on his tenth birthday, years ago.

"Zoroark, let's use U-turn!"

The next few moments was when this match become unbearable. When every second became lodged into his memory, a record player that could never shut up. This is the part when the nightmares usually start when they began to play almost every night after this.

In every flashback later on, this part would go on with agonizing slowness. Nate would be standing still, unable to move his feet or open his mouth as he watches hopelessly, _uselessly_, as Zoroark charges forward to what seemed now to be an inevitable outcome. In those split few moments, everything is drawn-out and slow, and Nate knows that something horrible is going to happen but is unable to do anything for it. He'll still stuck be there, no matter how much he wants to call the attack off or forfeit. And Zoroark will always follow his orders and continue charging.

In actual reality as it played out, this move came out fast, and Nate had no idea what was going to happen next. Zoroark was fast with the attack, and it looked like it was going to cause contact and knock Lucario out for good. This was how it was supposed to go, anyway. It was the way it always had before—

In the midst of a flash so bright that it hurt Nate's eyes, he saw Zoroark stumble unexpectedly. Once the debris had cleared enough, Nate could see that the attack missed. Somehow, inexplicably, Lucario had managed to evade it. Nate glanced at Cynthia, and saw that her own face was marked with bafflement.

Lucario was preparing to use Close Combat, and this was so predictable. Nate knew automatically that he was going to lose. This by itself was troubling, though he had no idea at what costs his loss would be. As it was, he found himself holding his breath momentarily. This was going to end badly.

Lucario punched Zoroark hard. Hard enough that the sounds of bones breaking could be heard around the stadium, and Nate cringed. Zoroark was forced to the floor easily. The punches seemed to come one right after another, a horrible flurry of them. Close Combat was a common move—one Nate had already seen several times before, sometimes from his own Pokémon—but this Lucario in particular seem to possess a different type of strength, and each punch brought a sickeningly loud resounding move. Nate had never seen the move pulled forward in such force. Gritting his teeth, he looked over at Cynthia, who looked eerily pale. Zoroark cried out and Nate found his own throat pain in an emotionally fueled constraint, his head swimming.

"All right then!" he found himself yelling out to Cynthia, yelling out to the crowd, the Pokémon, everyone. "The match is over!"

He took out Zoroark's Poké Ball and tried to return him as fast as he could. The bright pink light erupted from the Poké Ball, but its light was blocked by the Lucario, who was continuing to surround Zoroark. Nate looked to Cynthia in desperation.

"Lucario, return!"

"Stop it! _Cynthia_!" His voice came out in a shrill scream as the attacking Pokémon still didn't retreat and continued to attack Zoroark.

A puddle of blood was expanding underneath Zoroark, who appeared to have fainted and was even then obscured by Lucario. The audience was screaming. When Cynthia finally got her out-of-control Pokémon into control a few mere seconds later, the triumphant look on her face had left entirely. Instead she looked ill.

For a long time, whenever Nate thought about Cynthia, he couldn't help but think back to that scene where she was standing in front of him pale, her Poké Ball in hand. From a certain point of view, she didn't simply looked shocked; she looked horrified, present in the circumstances of something deeply disturbing. It was almost as though she'd already known Zoroark was gone.

* * *

"I'm so sorry, Nate."

Nobody had ever warned him that this was something that could happen. Even in his parent's generation, this wasn't a thing. There are Pokémon Centers that are supposed to patch Pokémon up whenever they got hurt. There were supposed to be nurses and doctors that would help with tough cases.

"The internal damage was just too much."

When it happened, Nate didn't believe that Zoroark was dead at the arena, because Pokémon were supposed to be resilient, and be able to come back up from about everything.

"I understand if you want to take a break..."

His other Pokémon, still in his bag. They felt so fragile now, because they could so easily break. One fight, and their lives could be snuffed out forever.

The next twenty-four hours were full of blurred events that passed by drearily. Nate's mother used to work at a Pokémon Center so when he told her the story he found himself wishing she would tell him that this was a mistake, that Pokémon don't die. Instead she hugged and tried to comfort him, and with this action, he was forced to confront the fact that denial was meaningless.

They buried Zoroark in a shaded meadow near Village Bridge since that was a place Zoroark and Nate particularly enjoyed together. Nate had thought that if Zoroark chose a place for him to go through his last journey, that would be the place he would have chosen. They had spent countless hours together, basking in the tranquil atmosphere in between more competitive intentions. It was there that they managed to catch Icebreaker, a Lapras that became a treasured member of the team. Zoroark even sometimes liked to shift into the shape of a human boy and walk near the river, looking like a younger brother of Nate. The place held special significance for them and it felt right to bury him near there.

Better to bury him there, than make that place near Aspertia City.

The best days in Nate's life was in the beginning of everything in his hometown, when he took his little Zorua outside to train and defeat the other neighborhood kids with his impressive Dark-type Pokémon. Even back then, he had to be the best—this was the way children grew up in this world, where they knew from an early age that power belonged only to the strong. Those nostalgic days of battling with neighbors in the wild grasses near his house, those days that would never come again, haunted his memory now. The concept of death being able to rise from these childhood activities now fundamentally damaged what he believed. And every day he thought about Zoroark, heart aching for the desire to be with him again. One time he forget about everything and reached for his bag, ready to release Zoroark's Poké Ball by habit, when he looked through and saw that the slot allocated for him was now filled by Meloetta. Then he remembered.

_I will never battle again, _was what he thought. It became what he said to people who asked why the former aspiring Pokémon Champion of Aspertia City didn't challenge people constantly anymore, when he no longer showed up battling facilities across Unova on a regular basis. They gave sympathetic yet sometimes strange looks, as though this was a kind of stage he would have to get over.

Besides, didn't Alder, the former Champion of Unova, also lost his starter to the irreversible force of death? (But he lost his in illness, Nate always remembered. That was different.)

His mother insisted that he had to "live." He could avoid going back to competitive battling, she said, but he had to do something. And eventually, she also said, he will be able to recover and go back to battling with Pokémon. Just like he used to. He was surrounded by people using and battling with Pokémon everyday, so he would have to get used to it again.

But somewhere in Nate there was still a young trainer who happily battled with a Zorua, and that young trainer didn't want to let go.

* * *

It's a quiet, shady spot in a slightly out-of-the-way corner. The area is surrounded with trees, but if a person were to weave around them, they might come across a small place with a grave for a Pokémon.

This is out of the ordinary. Usually Pokémon are buried together in cemeteries exclusive to them in a relatively well-known area. Here, the grave stands on its own, and if one stands before it, they might get a sense of how the lonely the atmosphere is. If a person stayed long enough, they could catch the scent of sea air from a nearby breeze.

There are a few recently planted flowers in front of the grave. So somebody still came here, a person might reason...someone still cared...


End file.
